Ignacio Mattos’s Most Treasured Cooking Tool

Image

CreditCreditDanny Ghitis for The New York Times

By Ligaya Mishan

March 30, 2015

The Microplane was never meant to be a grater. It was never designed to turn walnuts to dust, or lemon peel into sunny snow, or to make confetti of mojama — salt-cured, wind-hardened tuna loin from southern Spain — the way it does in the hands of Ignacio Mattos, the chef of the Manhattan restaurant Estela.

It was born to shave wood. Its maker, Grace Manufacturing of Russellville, Ark., originally specialized in etching steel parts for computer printers, using ferric chloride to produce edges so sharp that drops of blood were a regular sighting on the factory floor. The first Microplanes, flat, narrow pieces of surgical-grade stainless steel with acid-dissolved holes, were marketed in the early 1990s as rasps and hacksaws.

Then, in 1994, a hardware-store owner in Ottawa had a MacGyver moment while trying to eke out orange zest with a box grater. She grabbed a Microplane, and the peel was shredded in seconds. The result: an Armenian orange cake, and history.

Rival brands have since appeared. But for Mr. Mattos, 35, who grew up in Uruguay and learned to cook from his grandmother, there is no other. His feelings for Microplanes are less affectionate than evangelical. “I don’t know if people realize how incredible they are,” he said. “If they disappeared from the face of the earth, it would be the beginning of the end.”

Passion for such a prosaic, ubiquitous tool may come as a surprise from a chef who gained a reputation for the esoteric at Isa, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where he sent out surrealist compositions of burned hay and sardine spines. At Estela, in NoLIta, his food is more accessible but still has “a mild case of weirdness,” as Pete Wells wrote in a 2013 review.

The Microplane helps make dishes prettier; whatever is grated comes out “airier, fluffier” and “falls better,” Mr. Mattos said. But what he rhapsodizes about is how it saves time and reduces waste. He is still haunted by memories of box graters from his early days as a cook: mounds of lemons, skinned knuckles, half the zest clinging stubbornly to the blades. He said, “The day I put my hand around a Microplane, I thought, ‘Oh, my Lord.’ ”

He goes so far as to favor a Microplane without a handle, so you get “more blade” and can zest two or three fruits at once. “We use citrus in everything,” he said.

All this zesting takes a toll, especially when harder substances like mojama are put to the blades. The life of a Microplane at Estela is brief. Asked how long it lasts before it grows dull and has to be replaced, Mr. Mattos said, “Two months.” He looked wistful.

Close at Hand celebrates the objects, practical or precious, that cooks find indispensable.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section D, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: Shavings of the Edible Kind. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe